I’ve spent most of my life in the southeast U.S. and I love it. I grew up in southern Mississippi about a mile from the Gulf of Mexico, spent 2 years on the Florida west coast, and 10 years in the central Texas hill country. Those are all unique and beautiful places. But this mini photo essay is about the little piece of the South I call home now, North Carolina.

We lived in the western part of the state in the Blue Ridge Mountains for 10 years. Up there, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a national forest full of water falls, rhododendrons, black bears, abandoned mines, and hardwoods that turn fifty shades of brilliant in the fall. Now we’re living in the piedmont, about halfway between the mountains and the sea. The weather’s warmer, the land flatter, the wild flowers bloom longer, and the woods have a few more pines. And it’s just a few hours from the Outer Banks, 200 miles of largely undeveloped barrier islands that protect most of the Carolina coast from seas so treacherous that the area became known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

Taken from the Blue Ridge Parkway.

One of the falls visible from the Graveyard Fields trail off the parkway.

Pearson's Falls located on a botanical preserve in western NC.

The closest I ever came to meeting a bear in the woods. Some deer also passed this way.

Autumn on Falls Lake.

Surfers at Wrightsville Beach/

Hatteras Lighthouse

Nag's Head